the bed and kicked at her ankles until she parted her shaking
thighs. He pressed the barrel of the gun into her throat. “But
I like how you do it.”
Tossing the gun aside, he opened his pants and slammed
inside her. Her body clenched around him tighter with each
thrust. Despite her pleas and her protests, she grew wetter
the more he rammed into her, the harder he worked her. But he couldn’t come, not yet. Although he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. Sex with Phoebe was business, not
pleasure, and he hated the work.
As she moaned underneath him, crying against the intrusion, Kingsley closed his eyes and disappeared to another place,
another time. The elegant and well-appointed bedroom he
stood in disappeared and dissolved. The hunter-green walls
and the modern art prints faded away and rough wood took
their place. The king-size bed adorned with silk sheets and
pillows was gone, and now a small cot sat on the f loor near a
fireplace. And Kingsley lay on his side facing the fire. “You have a bruise on your neck under your ear,” S?ren
said, touching the sensitive spot with his fingertip. “It’ll go
above your collar.”
“If someone says anything, I’ll tell them a tree hit me.” S?ren laughed softly and kissed the bruise.
“I don’t think they’ll believe a tree hit you. Maybe they’d
believe you hit a tree.”
“Why would I hit a tree? A tree never did anything to me.” “Perhaps it likes being hit.” S?ren kissed Kingsley’s neck
again, his shoulder, his throat.
Kingsley remembered this night. It had a been a Sunday.
Everyone at their school went to bed early on Sunday nights.
They’d woken early for Sunday Mass and had to wake early
again for Monday morning classes. Once everyone had gone
to bed, he and S?ren had sneaked out to the hermitage to
spend a few perfect hours alone together.
“Aren’t you worried someone will find out what we’re
doing out here?” Kingsley asked as he covered S?ren’s roving
hand with his own.
“They’d never believe it even if we told them.” “What? They’d believe I’d sleep with a teacher, but they wouldn’t believe you’d sleep with a student?” Kingsley tried
to sound outraged. He wasn’t sure if he pulled it off or not. “Precisely.”
“Because I’m a slut, and you’re perfect?”
“Because you have friends, and no one likes me,” S?ren said. Kingsley sat up and looked down at S?ren.
“I like you,” Kingsley said.
“No, you don’t,” S?ren said with a half smile. “You want
me. There’s a difference.”
“You don’t like me, either,” Kingsley chided. He ignored
the unwelcome pang of sympathy S?ren’s placid “No one likes
me” declaration gave him.
“It isn’t that I don’t like you,” S?ren said with a playful
sigh. “It’s only I like me so much more than I like you that,
in comparison, it looks like I dislike you.”
“I might suffocate you tonight with a pillow,” Kingsley said. “You’ll have to teach my French classes, then. Lesson plans
in my desk.”
“Forget it. You get to live.”
“I thought as much.”
Kingsley collapsed on to S?ren’s chest with a sigh. S?ren
lifted Kingsley’s hair and pressed a kiss under his ear. “Well, I’m worried they’ll find out about us,” Kingsley
said, turning on to his side away from S?ren. S?ren wasn’t
deterred. He ran his hand down the center of Kingsley’s back
and pressed a kiss to the top of his spine. Kingsley relished
these moments, after the fire of S?ren’s sadism had burned itself out. The gentle touches and kisses hurt almost more than
the blows from the belt and the cane did. They hurt his heart,
and yet he treasured the ache. It was his favorite pain. “Why are you worried? We’re always careful. No one ever
sees us together. I don’t care if they find out about me. I have
places I can go. But I don’t want you…”